Mark Leckey’s iconic video work Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) has returned to YouTube, after temporarily being pulled by Google (who own the video-sharing website) following a breach of copyright claim. Leckey’s cult film is a 15-minute audiovisual essay charting the evolution of Britain’s nightlife culture and dance scene from the 1970s to the 1990s – from disco to rave – drawing entirely on found footage.

Leckey’s film was uploaded in 2011, and had been viewed more than 203,000 times, before the Turner Prize-winning artist received a removal notice last week following a claim by distribution company Fremantle Media, Inc. Both the video and the page containing viewer comments were removed.

Leckey then received an email yesterday informing him that YouTube had ‘released the Content ID claim on your video.’ Speaking to frieze, Leckey did not know why the video had been made available again. ‘Either […] they decided the claim wasn’t legitimate enough,’ he said, ‘or they somehow sensed a slight backlash […] I’m plumping for people power. The Creative Commons spoke!’

It is still unclear what Fremantle Media, Inc. was claiming the rights to. Leckey told frieze that he was aware of the risks of placing art on online platforms, and that the removal was not a surprise: ‘it was always more shocking that it stayed there […] It’s a fugitive film, in a way.’